Academician Wang Jianguo: Giving lessons to students is the most important thing

Author | Qin Zhiwei

Although there are many academic activities and heavy administrative affairs, Wang Jianguo, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a professor at the School of Architecture of Southeast University, always ranks students in the first line of the work calendar. Once, he was temporarily arranged for a business trip, and when he returned, he went straight to school and used the evening time to make up for undergraduates. Lin Yan, then a graduate assistant professor, remembers: "It was more than 10 o'clock in the evening when I left the office, but Teacher Wang was still commenting on the students' homework. ”

"Teaching students is the most important thing in school." Wang Jianguo told China Science Daily.

Not long ago, the results of the first Southeast University "Outstanding Teaching Award" were announced. The award is selected every two years and is divided into three categories: "Teaching Achievement Award", "Teaching Excellence Award" and "Teaching Rookie Award", and is awarded 1 million yuan / person, 200,000 yuan / person and 100,000 yuan / person respectively. Wang Jianguo received the only "Teaching Achievement Award".

Since teaching for 32 years, Wang Jianguo has always been active in the front line of teaching, and has trained more than 100 master's and doctoral students. He is good at combining disciplines and professions, teaching and scientific research, teaching and educating people, constantly exploring the reform of teaching models, and making outstanding contributions to cultivating high-level architectural innovation talents.

Wang Jianguo (first from left) and team members inspected the site of Niushoushan Visitor Center. Courtesy of Southeast University

Zhu Yuan is the vice dean of the School of Architecture at Southeast University and a student of Wang Jianguo. In the first year of his doctorate, Zhu Yuan asked his supervisor Wang Jianguo to help revise a thesis, and the revised draft returned made Zhu Yuan feel very deeply. "Revisions and annotations full of red pen, not only the hierarchy of the article, the wording of the sentence, and even the punctuation have been modified." From then on, Zhu Yuan did everything he did not forget to remind himself that he should always be serious and pay attention to details.

Wang Jianguo encouraged students to adhere to lifelong learning and learn a wide range of knowledge in various majors. For Zhu Yuan, Wang Jianguo's concept of "scattering but not dispersing" has a profound impact on him, and it also invisibly affects his guidance to students.

The so-called "scattered" means that Wang Jianguo is willing to give students as much freedom as possible, encourage them to do what they like, and maximize the potential of each student. The so-called "God does not disperse" means that he will combine the characteristics of the students and assign different tasks to them, so that they can grow in practice.

On the road to work and dinner, Wang Jianguo likes to share his experience with students, telling about going out to meet, undertaking projects, and guiding students' experiences.

Team X was once a very influential organization of architects and played a pivotal role in the development of modern and contemporary architecture. Its members have put forward a series of ideas that have been deeply influential in academic circles, such as "changing aesthetics" and "intermediary space".

However, no one in China has conducted systematic research on Team X. Wang Jianguo entrusted this task to Zhu Yuan and encouraged him: "We must dare to fill the gap in academic research." Zhu Yuan also lived up to expectations, and the doctoral dissertation he completed was awarded the national 100 outstanding doctoral dissertations. This paper was later compiled into a book and became an important document for other scholars to study Team X.

If you want to be a qualified architect, Wang Jianguo believes that you must not only read thousands of books, but also travel thousands of miles.

The students went to Shanghai Xinchang Ancient Town with Wang Jianguo to investigate, and the teachers and students lived together in the town's youth hostel. Every morning after getting up, Wang Jianguo began to read the literature about the ancient town and went to the town to investigate the field. When everyone gathered to investigate, Wang Jianguo had already finished inspecting once.

Assistant Yao Xinyue said: "Teacher Wang often gives us e-mails late at night, and travels continuously, traveling to several cities for several days. The fighting spirit in his body often makes us sigh to ourselves..."

In Wang Jianguo's view, the transformation of "pre-metaphor-post-metaphor-mutual metaphor" in the field of teaching is coming.

He further explained that in the past, classes were mainly taught by teachers, that is, "pre-metaphors". At certain moments, students learning from teachers will also be transformed into teachers learning from students, which is a "metaphor".

"The present should be an era of 'mutual metaphor', teachers and students form a learning community, teachers are the chief in learning, grasp the experience, lead the direction, but also learn from students." He said that the digital immediacy link between students and the wisdom of the Internet think tank group is replacing the traditional law and discipline of "preaching, teaching, and solving puzzles". Therefore, he believes that a new model of architectural teaching characterized by "mutual metaphor" is coming.

Faced with an uncertain future, Wang Encourages Teachers and Students to Be Lifelong Learners. "You can try and make mistakes, but you are not afraid of making mistakes; when you do learning, you must stick to it and not be conservative." He said, "For stock thinking, we must learn to 'not love the past', past success does not mean that the future will be successful, there can be no path dependence, we must continue to innovate." ”

Wang Particularly endorses a view in UNESCO's report, Learning to Survive – Educating the World Today and Tomorrow – "Education must train new people for a future that doesn't yet exist". In this sense, the breadth of knowledge is far more important than depth.

In Wang Jianguo's view, educators must fully understand the teaching tasks at all stages of undergraduate and graduate students, and be "targeted".

He believes that undergraduate is the stage of laying the foundation, and it is necessary for students to receive systematic, complete and comprehensive professional training and complete the transformation from "little white" to "professional newcomer". At this time, teachers and students are "one-to-many" relationships, focusing on the teacher's "preaching, teaching, and solving puzzles", and on this basis, the potential of students is stimulated. For master's students, each student has a relatively focused direction, relatively certain one or more tutors, and the relationship between teachers and students can be understood as "one-on-one". At this time, it is particularly important to cultivate innovative thinking among students who vary from person to person.

Correspondingly, Wang Jianguo requires master's students to master the basic principles of scientific thinking, and the thesis must have first-hand research data and empirical analysis and research, and at the same time systematically sort out and refine the research topic content and derive its common laws and scientific results accordingly.

At the doctoral level, students are no longer just instrumental research on methods and technologies, but also need to have a wide range of knowledge belonging to the "scientific community" and certain theoretical achievements. "It is necessary to cultivate their ability to solve professional problems under the guidance of theory and to allow them to contribute to the production of knowledge." Wang Jianguo asked students to pay attention to the frontiers of academic development and do more in-depth, systematic and comprehensive research in one direction within a few years.

Wang Jianguo often said that the glory of the architectural field of Southeast University today is the result of the continuous struggle of generations of architects, and he often remembers the historical contributions and hard work of the previous generations of scholars.

In 2001, Wang Jianguo became the head of the Department of Architecture at Southeast University. In 2003, the Department of Architecture was renamed the School of Architecture, and Wang Jianguo became the first dean. He believes that education should go out of the ivory tower, pay attention to the frontier of discipline development and adapt to the requirements of national reform and opening up, and also forward-looking to propose several development directions for future architecture - low-carbon green, digital technology, heritage protection, urban design and new urbanization. At the same time, he led the School of Architecture to adhere to the reform of teaching and curriculum systems, and strived to cultivate "π" talents with family and country feelings, liberal arts characteristics, and familiarity with international rules.

Wang Jianguo believes that the current architecture students need to have the environmental ethics awareness of sustainable development, the concerns and feelings of social and humanistic, the engineering and technical literacy and the increasingly important data literacy; they need to achieve liberal arts and wisdom, mutual learning of skills, and become "π" talents.

"Unlike 'I' type talents with only a single professional skill, and a multi-functional 'T' type talent, 'π' type talents are more comprehensive." Wang Jianguo explained that the "horizontal" above the "π" refers to the extensive knowledge and comprehensive ability, which has two "legs". One leg refers to superb professional ability, the other leg is an "n" concept, that is, with many related disciplines of professional ability, such talents will walk several "legs" at the same time, "legs" and "legs" between parallel, its different professional crosses can often generate new innovative kinetic energy.

Wang Jianguo and colleagues actively carry out teaching and research work. Since 2011, on the basis of the professional construction achievements of the previous "3+2" integrated and two-wing teaching system of architectural education in Southeast University, based on the creative engineering attributes of architecture majors (including architecture, urban and rural planning, and landscape architecture), Wang Jianguo and his colleagues have newly proposed and practiced the talent training concept of "learning, doing, integrating and creating", highlighting the cultivation of sustainable and innovative ability of architectural students, and producing extensive leading and exemplary significance in the country.

"As teachers, our teaching exploration is always on the way." Wang Jianguo said. In the preface to "The Architect's Twenty Years", he wrote: "The passion and eagerness of 'ignorant and fearless' reflected in the learning process of architecture students is precious and rare. 'Young' usually means childish and fragile, but it also has a vision of ideals and a vibrant spirit of innovation. ”